They're Big On Small Business Florida Entrepreneurs Find Sacrifice Worth The Freedom Of Being Their Own Boss Tommy Tompkins, Tompkins Development

August 19, 1985

''I don't get up from bed in a dead run. I am just simply doing what I know right now.''

What Tommy Tompkins does know is how to build homes. He built his Tompkins Development Corp. of Florida into one of the largest in the state before he was 30. Then he sold the company in 1981 to the second-largest home- building company in America, Centex Homes of Dallas.

''I sold the home-building company because I was bored,'' Tompkins said. But after the sale, ''It was like somebody took my arm.''

So, he decided he needed a new arm. ''One day it wasn't mine anymore. I definitely enjoyed having responsibility more than not having responsibility.''

Tompkins' next responsibility was Tompkins Investment Group and MKT Housing, which he started in 1982. MKT builds multifamily housing.

Tompkins sees that housing in his mind before he's even touched the land the housing will be on. ''I see the land and I have the instinct to see the ultimate use of it,'' Tompkins said. One project he's working on is still on the drawing boards. ''When I drive through that or see that piece of land, I don't see all the problems or the mess. I see kids riding bicycles in the streets, and I see clotheslines and clothes hanging on the clotheslines and I see husbands cutting grass on Saturday mornings and the wives are washing the cars and driving the station wagons, and that's what I see.''

Tompkins has built 10,000 homes in the state and thousands of apartments with his second company. Things were not always so fruitful for the home builder, though. He started developing his first piece of land with his first company in the middle of the 1973-74 recession. ''I remember I could drive through subdivisons and see hundreds of homes that were half-built, with weeds growing up to the top of the roofs, and the roofs on the houses had never been shingled. It was disastrous.''

Now Tompkins deals with a different problem -- boredom. ''Tomorrow is not bringing anything new,'' he said. ''I'm unchallenged. I'm still looking for more. I'm not secure in the knowledge that I will find something.''